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Jack Sim
Founder of the World Toilet Organization (WTO), Singapore
Jack Sim lives according to the motto "Live a Useful Life". Growing up in a slum in the 1950s in Singapore, he developed a keen interest and concern for sanitation because he felt this subject was largely neglected in the human development sector. Toilets are still a taboo although 2.6 billion people in the world do not have proper access to clean and safe sanitation. There was too much to be done, which led Jack to establish the World Toilet Organization in Singapore in 2001.
Jack’s current WTO project is the creation of the BOP Hub. BOP, the Bottom of the Pyramid, refers to the four billion people that live on up to US$8 a day – 40% of the world’s population that is largely excluded from participating in formal markets.
The Hub acts as a trade centre for poor customers in developing countries and integrates business solutions to transform human development sectors into vibrant marketplaces. The BOP Hub will explore market based solutions for various segments such as water, food, housing, energy, and transportation to push for better life quality for the poor. The Hub’s pilot project is a social franchise model for sanitation, in which local entrepreneurs are supported in creating businesses to offer affordable and well-designed sanitation products and services to the BOP customers.
Jack was one of the key members to convene the Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA), an international network of more than 130 organisations active in sustainable sanitation.
Jack is a Fellow of Ashoka and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and sits in the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Councils (GAC) for Water Security. Time Magazine named him as Hero of the Environment in 2008. Jack is also the subject of a National Geographic channel documentary called “Gotta Go” and the latest Vanguard episode “The World’s Toilet Crisis”.
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